


No Headbands in College

by womanaction



Category: Gossip Girl
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Season 3 AU, companion minific to 8tracks mix, music/story integration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-05
Updated: 2016-11-05
Packaged: 2018-08-29 02:56:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8472778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/womanaction/pseuds/womanaction
Summary: Companion to an 8tracks Season 3 AU mix. Dan and Blair somehow start to make sense.





	

**Author's Note:**

> 8tracks link: http://8tracks.com/woman-of-action/no-headbands-in-college

[ thesis statement: hollywood renaissance ]

It was stupid, really, but he'd always thought there had to be something romantic about Blair Waldorf. Maybe it was the way she elaborately costumed herself, covering up whatever was underneath in layers of lace and satin and perfume and snobbery. She saw herself as the heroine of some grand story even now, wearing those godawful headbands like they were a bulletproof vest and the unimpressed stares of their classmates would just ricochet off. She didn't look fragile or lost, like he might have expected, although she walked down the hall more alone than he'd ever seen her - she looked like belief herself. He kind of wanted to believe in her, too.

* * *

 

~~don't tell anyone!~~

Class notes had turned into coffee had turned into movies somehow, actually going places with Dan Humphrey and his flannel shirts and his too-big smile, can you imagine? Not places where she could be seen - not that anyone was looking - that was beside the point. It was a silly little secret to keep. She only kept him around to amuse her with his trying-too-hard jokes. He was just so eager to please, like a little puppy at her heels, and it was too easy to sit back in a daze and just watch them hurtle toward... _something_. Every day they seemed to get closer, and she was starting to wonder when they'd run out of space.

* * *

 

(she's gonna kill me with a stare)

He was unbelievably screwed, and he couldn't even tell anybody about it. Vanessa had ditched him slowly, losing herself in a relationship with someone unbelievably talented who was really going places. Dan wasn't really going places, unless you counted tiny little restaurants trendy enough for Blair to step inside but beneath the notice of the all-seeing eye of NYC. Every time he sat down to write, he'd squint at the halfhearted notes on notebook paper. The ink marks seemed to coalesce until they defined Blair Waldorf, captured in cups of coffee with skim milk and fingertips skidding along hallowed first editions. 

* * *

 

_-_ \- I believe you when you say we're never gonna fall

When Serena had left, Blair had filled her absence with mimosas and sleepovers, crowns and Nate's soft lips. She'd had everything she wanted, even if she cried and made herself sick three times a week. This time when Serena was halfway across the country and caught up in five scandals at once, Blair merely listened sympathetically while eating her macaroons and thinking about the movie she saw last night with Humphrey. That's how she knew that she'd really begun to rely on him, more than she had let herself rely on Serena since everything that had happened. For once, though, she didn't want to overanalyze and demystify the root of her feelings. She just wanted to feel. Content.

* * *

 

Unless I pretend...

It never would have happened if she hadn't suggested they go out. If he hadn't agreed. If whatever combination of genetics and inexperience made him such a chatty drunk - not even drunk, he was just this side of tipsy and rhapsodizing on her eyes and her smile and her brilliance and her humor and all of a sudden she was gasping and shutting down. He didn't even realize until he was at the bar alone that she'd somehow understood what he'd been trying to express for weeks. He stayed, moodily, and wondered if this was the credits or just the end of the third act.

* * *

 

? trying to play together somehow

Thank God that Humphrey had made his bad decision on the Friday before break, she had thought as soon as she stepped back into the penthouse. She planned to spend the entirety of her break resolutely not thinking of him. Of course, that plan failed constantly and consistently, until she began to simply wonder whether she should humor him and pretend she was interested in him. Surely she could get away with a few pity kisses now and then, holding hands in the dark cinema, letting him slip an arm around her. All of that just to keep the companionship going, of course. Intellectual conversation partners were hard to find. It would only be pretending, just like she'd done for months now whenever anyone mentioned Dan's name in passing and she'd laughed it off and dismissed his very existence.

 

                                           ...Oh God. She'd called him Dan.

* * *

 

. . . this time I won't try to stop you . . .

Once again, Dan was left utterly confused. Somehow he'd gone from being friends with Blair Waldorf to being utterly ignored by her to dating her. She hadn't even offered him a reason. She didn't even seem that fond of him. She just knocked on his door the day before classes started back and propositioned him, for lack of a better word. Surely he could think of a better word. After all, they hadn't had sex yet, and even affixing that yet seemed unnecessarily optimistic. Sometimes she would look at him with dark eyes, but then she would brush her lips against his so gently it was like she didn't feel it. He would have felt it even if she had been on the other side of the room.

* * *

"our skylines run on different times"

They fought constantly. Honestly, she didn't know what she'd expected. She tried not to think about it most of the time. It scared her, to think of herself on the edge of this precipice. Only that moment, waiting for him to answer the door weeks ago, she'd felt like she had already fallen in. Somehow, being with Dan was lonelier than being his friend, like everything he wanted from her had polluted her heart too. It had to be him wanting it. Not sex - she intended to cross that off the list that grew shorter every day of things they hadn't done together. No, what Dan wanted from her seemed to be some undefined abstract concept of more. She couldn't have imagined months ago that if they'd come to this point he would be the one to break it off, but now she started to anticipate it. Any minute, he'd decide she wasn't going to ever be enough.

* * *

you && i were never meant to meet

"Aren't you going to break up with me?" Provocative.

"Why would I break up with you?" Mystified, irritated.

"Why wouldn't you?" Stubborn, self-hating.

"Do you want me to break up with you?" Also stubborn, also self-hating.

"I don't know." Quietly, honestly.

"Maybe you should figure that out and break up with me. After all, everything in this relationship seems to be up to you." Bitterly.

"I like you." The softest sound possibly ever.

"What?"

"You heard me."

"Okay."

"Just okay? That's all you have to say to me?"

"Look, Waldorf, I've written sonnets about you! And I'm terrible at them, but I write them anyway. You're all I think about every day and have been for months, but you're obviously not happy, so maybe...maybe we should just break it off."

"I want to be happy," she said, realizing. Coming back to herself.

"Then you should be."

"It's that simple?"

"I don't know. Maybe it can be." 

! that's one thing we've got !

* * *

 

You're the only one who /  
Knows exactly what I mean

It wouldn't have been a thrilling end credits scene. Not everything was magically fixed, but neither was it meaningfully broken. They went on as they had, but a little better and better every day, and eventually Dan began to realize that maybe there didn't have to be an end credits or an epilogue or any end at all, really. Maybe they could just go on for as long as possible, fighting over the tiniest little things and falling asleep on the couch. They both seemed to think it was worth a try.

 


End file.
